Wolf and Cat, Log 12

   This is the 12th log of my Ironsworn solitaire campaign about Oddi Ice-Chosen. Character background and start of the narrative can be found at: Wolf and Cat, Log 1. 

Session length varies wildly. Some are multi-hour sessions in open evenings, others are 20-minute diversions over a lunch-break. 

Cast of Characters:

• Oddi Ice-Chosen, my main PC. Abducted by a Firstborn sorceress as a child, only recently returning to the world of men, motivated by a terrible prophetic vision. Wears an enchanted wolf-skin. Storyweaver and occasional ritual spellcaster.
  
• Sammutisel: Oddi's pet Cave Lion. 150 pounds, 4-inch fangs. 
• Kasju Frystgrotta: The Firstborn sorceress that abducted Oddi and taught him magic.
• Grassa Bitterloss: Oddi's mother. Recently reunited after 12 years.
  
• Emelyn Firetop: Blacksmith. Survivor of the destruction of Oddi's hometown. 
• Tern: Emelyn's younger brother. Werebear.
• Myrgun Bitterblad: Oddi's sister. Currently missing in the Shatterwood.
• Rygar Bitterblad: Oddi and Myrgun's recently deceased father. Grassa's ex-husband.

Session Log 12:  8/7/2021

Reminder: My wolf pelt is no longer charged by the Bind ritual.

Oddi awakes from bad dreams before dawn, and since the moon is out, so he clears a bit of brush from the top of the hill to create the smallest space necessary to dance his ritual vestment of his wolf-pelt.

Ritual: Bind - Wits - MISS! I rolled a 5 for my action die, but unfortunately, both of the Challenge Dice came up 10's.  So thats a Complication, and my pelt is not charged.

Reveal a danger - 79 You confront a harrowing situation or sensation.

Action: Threaten   Theme: Portent

Oddi does the dance, and the chant, and calls down the moon. But instead of her rays investing my wolf pelt, the energies enter into the Hexen-Collar instead. It becomes much stronger. Oddi feels a desire to put it on, and actually gets it out of his satchel. He knows it's wrong. A voiceless snarl rides outward upon the wind. If Tern were to see it right now, the boy would be unable to resist putting it on. He picks it up, and winds up to throw it out into the brambles. That too would be reckless. It would be what the collar wants, what the twisty man wants. If he throws it out there, some evil will find it in short order, and be made all the stronger for it. A Bear-Broken could tear Sword Hope to the ground. His hands shaking, Oddi carefully puts the collar back in his bag, and latches the bag closed.

The sun rises over a sea of thorns. He hopes that those same evils won't be drawn directly to him and his satchel.

Elsewhere, in the village of Sword Hope, Emelyn Firetop and Tern are staying in the home of family friends, Fregertha Four-Horse and her husband Amolfir. They are frequent customers who would travel into Forgotten Despair while it stood, and do business with Emelyn, or her father when he was alive. Amolfir is not home, having been convinced by Myrgun Bitterblad to follow her into the Shatterwood. Fregertha is very worried about him, as they've been gone a few days now, and Amolfir is no longer a young man. He's between Emelyn and her father in age, old enough that running off to war is a bad idea, but yet young enough that his pride would not let him refuse to help a friend in need. Fregertha was so happy yesterday when Emelyn and Tern showed up, and she invited them into her home. But when evening fell and Amolfir and their party still hadn't returned, Fregertha found she couldn't sleep. Emelyn stays up half the night talking with her, before climbing up into the loft she and Tern are using as a bedroom.

Some time later, Emelyn is awoken by her brother shouting downstairs. Emelyn rushes to protect him. By the time she's in kitchen, it's clear that Tern is the aggressor, not the victim. He's snarling and gnashing his teeth like a wild animal. Fregertha is holding a chair like a shield. "Tern!? What are you doing?" Just then, the first rays of the rising sun come fall through the window, and Tern stops growling. "What'd you say Emy?" He rubs his eyes. "How'd I get down here?" They decide he was sleepwalking, but Fregertha makes sure not to be alone in a room with him the rest of the day, just in case.

 

Oddi packs up his meagre camp, and surveys the Shatterwood from the hill in the pale light of dawn. The East side of the hill is a mass of brambles that he knows to be deceptively deep. The west slope has visible ground, fewer vines and thorns but more of the broken petrified trees felled in ages past by Fluug's Curse. He looks for signs indicating what route may lead to Myrgun or The Broken.

Gather Information: Weak Hit +1 Momentum

There's a whisp of smoke rising above the Shatterwood to the SouthWest. Small enough to be a campfire or a cookstove, not a raging conflagration. "Come, Sammutisel."

Delve the Depths - Weak Hit - Roll On Table: 42 (Mark Progress)  Feature: Elder Tree

In this portion of the half-height Shatterwood, there's one large full-sized tree, that's clearly been growing for a long time. Oddi passes near it, intended to speak hushed terms of reverence for a spirit of nature strong enough to thrive and prosper in such a difficult setting. As he approaches, he sees there are three people hanging from the branches, their life choked out of them by nooses. Two are Broken men with bodies painted and scarred. The third, however, is a man clad in furs and leathers, the way a civilized man would dress for war if he were not wealthy enough to afford a suit of mail. No paints, tattoos or the like, except a smear of white ash on his forehead that could be nothing. He has several wounds, mostly bruises but also bloodied bandages wound around his left shoulder and arm. He fought, survived, was treated, and then later hung until dead.  Oddi pauses for a few minutes to envision what sort of stories might explain what crimes this man must have committed within this forest for him to be hung at the same time as two of the foes he came here to revenge himself against. Could he have betrayed Myrgun's group? Why would they have slain him, and why wouldn't they bury him as they did the others? There's no answers here, so Oddi moves on rather than bury them. Dangling is a traitor fate.

Cautiously, Oddi walks on for a few more hours, the broken ground and shattered trees make it slow going.

Delve the Depths - Weak Hit - Roll On Table: 74 (Find Opportunity) 77: You get the drop on a denizen. -  Feature: Clearing  Action: Clash  Theme: Problem

Voices and the ringing of stone and metal come from the spaces ahead.  Oddi carefully wends his way through the underbrush to get a closer look.

Two snarling Broken circle around each other with axes drawn, one holding a hand to his gut where he's clearly been stabbed since morning. They are completely focused on each other, hatred in their eyes. Three more Broken lay bloodied on the clearing between shattered trees. The unwounded one is threatening an attack, forcing the other to react and strain his pained abdomen. It's clear who will win if they are left to be, but Oddi swore vengeance. He and Sammutisel creep into position, and then spring out!

Enter the Fray w/ Cave Lion Edge - Weak Hit (Take the Initiative), +3 momentum from Cave Lion and the Opportunity.

Battle - Strong Hit and an Opportunity -   Oracle: Combat Actions: Attack with Precision

Sammutisel streaks past the wounded one, and comes away dragging the mans intestines. The man who was a moment ago his assailant turns to face my cat, and I slip up right behind him, and rest the cold iron of my knife against his throat.

Does he talk, or is he stubborn and makes me slit his throat? Ask the Oracle: 50/50 - 71

The madman lacks the good sense to surrender or even freeze up. Instead, he tries to escape my grasp, and ends up with his neck opened and bleeding. He staggers two steps, gestures with his primitive axe, and then falls over.  The battle is over in an instant, the only sounds a soft purr and throaty squish.

Ask Oracle - Then what's the Opportunity here, if I can't interrogate them?

Plot Twist - True Identity is Revealed      Theme - Fear    

I look at the face of the man whose neck I slit. He's an ugly, nasty looking fellow, more scars and tattoos than the other guy, and more than Garl or any of the other Broken I've seen before. He has a jutting lower jaw, and a terrible old scar down the left side of his face that puckers and splits his lip, leaving leaves one large mishapen tooth protruding up through the gap like the tusk of a boar. Is this Feris Left-Tusk? Has there been a second betrayal in the Broken camp already?

I search the body. His hands are still locked around the haft of an axe and the hilt of a dagger, both of crude Broken manufacture, jagged bits of beaten and pocked metal, bound to bone handles. His belt, though, is treated leather, hand tooled and decorated with greater style and refinement. Hanging from it is scabbard: equally as fancy, long enough for a proper sword, but currently empty. I search about the clearing, the bodies, and the underbrush further than I think a man could hurl it. Sammutisel sniffs about in widening circles, understanding that I'm hunting for something, but possibly unsure what we seek. My father's sword is not present at this battle, despite his scabbard being on Feris Left-Tusk's body.

My stomach is churning. I'm deep in enemy territory, and the one lead I had to my father's weapon is now dead beneath me. I wonder if the Bloodsick Warrior from my vision in the Cave is not a metaphor, but an actual person who may have seized control of the Broken Clan. I leave their bodies for the crows, and make haste in the direction of that smoke I saw to the SouthWest.

Delve the Depths w/ Edge - Miss

Reveal a Danger - Environmental or Architectural Hazard    Feature: 23 - Dense Thicket -

I race forward through the shatterwood, the ground growing more broken and uneven as I go. As I crest a ridge, I wonder if maybe I should be slowing down. The thought comes a moment too late, and the ground on the backside of the ridge gives way. I slide uncontrolled down the hill and crash into a huge thicket at the bottom of it.

Face Danger with Edge - Weak Hit  - Success but take 1 Harm  - Endure Harm - Weak Hit

Much like the other place, the ravine at the bottom is overgrown with brambles. Before I vanish into the stabbing dark, Sammutisel grabs my belt in his saberteeth, and pulls me back out. Grinning, the cat tosses me onto the steep slope, and plants a heavy paw on my chest to pin me in place. Good boy.

After catching his breath, Oddi looks upward at the towering wall of brambles. It runs up near as high as the ridge I came over. Above it is a watchtower, giving the impression that the thicket is a castle wall. Oddi has only seen castles illustrated in books that Kasju shared with me in the Frozen Cave of Zhan. These are like the walls of Thyckete and Thorne, perhaps the most famous of the Firstborn castle-growers. Men in the Old World made castles of stone. Men in the Ironlands sometimes do the same, but more-often erect walls of dead logs, like Proud Hoarfrost or Jorgun Kin-Foe did. A living castle, on the other hand, means a Firstborn at least laid its foundations. This place is important.

Mark Your Failures - 1 mark for this session